- Agri growth fell from 6.25pc to 0.56pc due to poor policies.
Conversation with Dr. Nafisa Shah, a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan
Profile:
Syeda Nafisa Shah Jilani is a Pakistani politician who has been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan since February 2024, having previously served in this position from August 2018 till August 2023 and from March 2008 to May 2018.
She served as chair of the National Commission for Human Development and general secretary of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus between 2008 and 2013.
She has been vice president of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. She also headed the National Commission for Human Development.
She has doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford.
Pakistan & Gulf Economist had an exclusive conversation with Dr Nafisa Shah about agriculture sector of Pakistan. Following are the excerpts of her conversation:
The current state of agriculture is pitiful and this sorry state of affairs sadly has been done under the watch of this government by denying wheat support prices to farmers and allowing imports of agricultural commodities and indirectly supporting farmers of importing countries instead of supporting our own.
Whatever was left for farmers by way of imports has been taken away. However provinces are attempting to give basic Subsidies to growers. I am not sure how helpful it would be in the absence of wheat support price and checking of wheat and sugar imports.
Let me also say that the caretaker government’s import of wheat was one biggest cause of the present state of wheat cultivation in Pakistan. Instead of acquiring our own fresh wheat stocks the caretaker government imported wheat of poor quality depriving our farmers income and our country from homegrown wheatstocks.
The agricultural growth came down from 6.25 per cent to 0.56 per cent just in one year. This is the result of poor anti agriculture policies.